Choosing What to Believe
Recently, I have been having a hard time sticking with what I choose to believe about the world. Since childhood, I have spent time making a conscious effort to fight against negativity as it pops up in my mind and in the thoughts of people I am close to.
My first conscious decision to do this was sparked by one of the books my father read aloud to the family after dinner when I was 11 or 12. The book was “What Do You Care What Other People Think” by the theoretical physicist Richard Feynman. As an 11- or 12-year-old, the content of the book didn’t make much, if any, impact. It was the title that struck me. I had never considered the fact that I could choose what to think about the world. At that age, I had been thinking a lot about the opinions of others and had been struggling for two or three years with the - not even conscious idea - that maybe I didn’t fit into the mold as neatly as other people did.
Just a note – the book isn’t strictly about physics. The first part consists of stories about Feynman’s life; the second part is about his investigation into the cause of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. The second part of the book is another area that caught my attention because I, and most other school children at the time, watched the Challenger explosion on television in school.
It was this one sentence “What Do You Care What Other People Think” that made me aware that I had been focused on the opinions of other people and helped me realize that I could decide to not care.
For many years I’ve been happily looking at the world and choosing to not necessarily go with my initial instinctive reaction or with the popular opinion. Recently, I was talking with someone about the current state of the world, and I expressed my – possibly too sunny - opinion that there is a chance that the bad things happening in the world will bring people out of their social media-induced stupor to make some positive changes together. The person I was talking to preferred his negative opinion that nothing good could possibly come out of this and we’re stuck in this situation.
I asked him what good that thinking will do him and will it make any impact on world. I said that it would probably be more productive for his own mental health and for the world to try thinking something different. He didn’t seem to be convinced.
I’m beginning to struggle to believe this myself as we hear bad news day after day with only a small amount of good news to balance it.
When I have cyclical negative thoughts about a decision I made or have to make in the future, I try to change my belief about it, change the way I look at the situation, and tell myself a different story about what the outcome could be.
Not being a historian or political scientist – without any experience with something like this – I’m limited in the types of stories I can tell myself. In the news – sometimes historians say “this is where we will start to see a change” while other historians say “this is a carefully though out plan”. I can’t tell myself a story about a nice resolution to what’s going on because I don’t have enough information. What I do know about is about people. I know that most people don’t want others to suffer or to face adversity. I know that people can work together to solve problems. It’s hard. Not only do people have to work hard to actually solve the problem – they have to work hard to be able to work together peacefully.
I am seeing people fighting for what they believe is right. They are choosing to believe that what they do will make a difference.
So even though it is hard, I’m going to continue to believe that good things will continue to happen. We’ll come together to make sure everyone is safe and has what they need. I believe that we will make our world a better place for the short time we have it and for the generations to come.
Believing is the hard work. Once you have that, you’ve already won.